


I'm Still Here

by Nebulad



Series: Honour, Glory, Immortality [2]
Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Other, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 00:05:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10842285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nebulad/pseuds/Nebulad
Summary: “I’m missing something but you aren’t telling me what it is like you usually do.” As always, Farkas was a sharper man than he was being given credit for— Kastus was no great liar, which was what always made his forays into civilization so brief. It got tiresome after a while, to keep lying and covering up his lies and trying to keep track of them all. He couldn’t even be clever with white lies because how did one dance around vampirism?“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” he responded with a shrug, making himself comfortable.





	I'm Still Here

Skyrim was a grim frozen hellhole that the Eight or Nine or however fucking many there were now had firmly turned their backs on. The whole entire place was a write-off. One day some sod from Cyrodiil would trudge all the way up north to see how the Nords lived when Tamriel wasn’t watching, and all he’d find was an empty snow-desert and Kastus’ frozen body giving the entire shitty landscape the finger. At the moment, however, he was simply expected to tolerate it alongside his unflappable Nord companion; in reality, he alternated violently between sweating profusely and shivering like the snow was finally going to kill him.

They— him and Farkas— were… somewhere near Morthal. Maybe not _near,_ but definitely at least skirting Hjaalmarch; that meant there was snow on the ground. It was cold enough for snow, which only sometimes mattered to his horrendously ill body. From mortal, to vampire, to werewolf within the span of… well, a fair amount of years to his credit. Either way it didn’t help him grasp any of the tenuous control that the others had over their lycanthropy— the wolf inside Kastus had a mind of its own, and was apparently a fucking idiot who couldn’t be coerced into behaviour for the best of both of them.

Kodlak had delicately suggested that perhaps Kastus would want to be out of the city for this particularly _sensitive_ time, as the moon waxed on. Sissel would be welcome in Jorrvaskr while he was gone, of course— she took care of herself, for the most part, but Aela was always eager to spend some time with the little girl. It was for the best, all around; Farkas could go along, since he was having the same trouble that Kastus was, apparently. It was equally likely that Kodlak simply didn’t trust him and wanted someone incorruptible to tend to him like a Jarl’s spoiled child.

“What’s the point of being a werewolf if you can’t turn?” he snapped viciously as they trudged along the beaten path. The moonlight felt like scissors against his skin, unstitching him thread by thread.

“We’re cursed. Turning is bad for the soul.” And if _that_ didn’t sound rehearsed. _Turning is bad for the soul—_ it was rot, all of it. Farkas wasn’t so foolish as to actually believe any of that, and if he did then Kastus was certain he didn’t really care even if it was true. What would he do in Sovngarde anyway?

“Is that what Vilkas tells you?” The _other_ twin wasn’t out here with them, freezing his ass off, because it was convenient for Jorrvaskr to forget its less disciplined children for a while. Vilkas heard the call of the blood, but he’d been resisting steadily. It probably wasn’t easy— especially if he felt the same way Kastus felt, like he was about to tear himself in half— but he managed it. Farkas had broken the dam when he’d turned against the Silver Hand and revealed himself to Kastus— gods, it felt like forever ago now. Locked in a claustrophobic crypt with a werewolf, a vampire had nearly pissed himself in terror. _Thanks for the warning, Amund. I suppose you think you’re very funny for not telling me._

“You don’t think so?” He wasn’t actually asking, just trying to keep Kastus talking so he wouldn’t needle him.

“ _You_ don’t think so, hypocrite.”

“What?”

“Oh don’t be coy—”

“I’m not. What’s _hypocrite_ mean?” He kept staring straight ahead, endlessly trudging along. It was hard to tell if he was really _hearing_ the blood; the chances that he was bold-faced _lying_ were incredibly low, but Farkas was inscrutable. No one had outright _said_ that he was finding it more difficult to resist beast form after having let go in Dustman’s Cairn; it was possible that he simply hit the part of the moon cycle that obligated him to change. The others could dip in and out quietly, or in Vilkas’ case just grit his teeth and bite down the agony, but apparently Farkas was less easy to control.

Kastus was more than willing to keep him company, even if he found this whole _try to fight the urge_ thing ridiculous. He’d proven that he couldn’t care less about his soul before Kodlak had been born, ages past in Hammerfell after abandoning High Rock in favour of eternity; whatever was left of his soul now in Skyrim was just going to have to _deal,_ because this noble struggle was pointless and painful. He didn’t like pain.

“It’s where you say one thing but actually _do_ something else. Like when you stand there and tell me that changing is bad for my soul even though I _know_ you don’t care about Sovngarde,” he explained. Somehow throughout their myriad of adventures, Kastus had never gotten tired of stopping mid-sentence to clarify something for Farkas. He’d thought that this fairly stereotypical display of sheer… Nord-ness would be off-putting, but he found as a whole he preferred it to trying to match wits with Vilkas. Perhaps he was shallow and just found the other twin better looking— perhaps still waters ran deep in Farkas. Probably both, knowing the two of them.

“I care about being there with Vilkas,” he pointed out.

Kastus resisted the urge to roll his eyes, instead trying to focus on the path ahead. Farkas only had _one_ sibling, so maybe that was easier to stand than thirteen of them. Kastus had specifically become a vampire to negate the risk of getting into the afterlife and finding the table crowded with twenty-six grabby little hands making a mess— gods, and the _noise._ Tsun would have the whole family out on their asses and a brand new _No Bretons Allowed_ rule. “It doesn’t sound boring to you? Cooped up in the same mead hall singing about how great you used to be?”

“No.” That was honest, at least. “Just reckon I don’t really belong there.”

“Oh?”

“It’s for heroes of legend, warriors whose songs are sung for thousands of years after their death. I’m not like Kodlak or Ysgramor,” he shrugged. “I’m just me.” The tone of voice he said it in had to be a crime in at least one of the provinces, which he heard too. His neck and flushed as he caught Kastus giving him that _look,_ and he rushed to change the subject. “What happens to Bretons after they die?” He resisted the urge to snort.

“Oh who knows?” he asked flippantly. “Probably the same thing as Imperials, although I never really understood what exactly that was either. The souls go to space, or something?” His mother had been a high ranking government official, and his father had been too busy cleaning up the sticky, smelly messes of too many children; there really hadn’t been a place for Kastus to learn what was to happen to his immortal soul, should he have been inclined to ask.

“Bretons don’t have stories?” His face made it look like _sacrilege,_ and so Kastus felt a little bad for laughing.

“Well, it seems like it’d be a little complicated to make a decision, wouldn’t it? We’re half elven, so we’ve dipped our toes into those lakes as well as human ones. You can see evidence of worship all over— Dibella, Y’ffre—”

“Yeef..?”

“A Bosmeri god, the one responsible for making them all carnivores.” That was about all Kastus knew, but luckily Farkas didn’t press. “But there’s overlap— Phynaster from the High Elf pantheon, Y’ffre, Mara, Julianos… it’s all very complicated and it wasn’t as if I was particularly fixated after—”

He stopped, and then… “After I…” Gods his mind went blank.

That was the closest he’d ever come to telling Farkas what he’d _been._

“After…” Kastus must’ve been transparent because Farkas was looking at him expectantly.

“Leaving Wayrest,” he answered, _entirely_ unsuspicious and collected. Truth be told he still wasn’t sure how the Companions had _missed_ letting a vampire into their ranks. If Kastus focused for too long he could _smell_ Farkas’ pulse, and yet no one had caught on to the heavily cloaked, wane stranger who only dragged himself into Jorrvaskr at dusk.

And of course the least observant man in the province was suddenly some sort of sharp-eyed sleuth, giving Kastus a sideways look. “You’re lying,” he said. It wasn’t accusatory, he was simply pointing it out.

Normally, this would be a prime opportunity to smile cheekily and brush him off; despite the fairly obvious comparison to a dog, Farkas could be put off the scent fairly easily. He didn’t like conflict and wasn’t assertive enough to hold his own in an argument that he really had no investment in. It was the moonlight, again, though, and the heat in his body cranking like someone had stoked a nearly-dead fire into a blaze. White hot anger flushed up into his head and he tensed all over. “How would you know?” he asked, definitely accusatory.

“Because you wouldn’t stop dead unless you were hiding something.” Oblivious to the sweat beading on Kastus’ head, Farkas kept on forward. He’d even said it so casually, almost like he was teasing his companion’s complete inability to behave normally for long stretches of time.

“I’m not _hiding_ anything,” he snapped, but Farkas was reading him wrong. He _knew_ that, knew that he didn’t mean to mistake _fury_ and _pain_ for being flustered of all things, but he was doing it anyway and it felt like they were talking in circles. It didn’t do anything but make him feel… interrogated.

“Say it all you like, but we’re in a pack. You can’t hide things from the Circle.”

“Apparently I _can_ if none of you seem to be able to put your damn fingers on what makes me so _suspicious.”_ The thought of the Circle— of Aela and Skjor and Kodlak and the twins all just sitting there and talking about him like some sort of curiosity, like an _outsider._ He’d been one of those his whole life and he’d never cared, but then lycanthropy had obligated him to a pack and the thought of being on the edges? Of being a fringe member of a family that’d all but grown up together? Raised one another?

And there he was like an idiot, no control, no ties to any earthly being, no reverence, no honour, just _intruding._ He was always intruding, from his birth family and through forays into vampire clans, he was _always_ the stranger that dipped in and out. And suddenly now this _pack_ wanted to make him feel strange and isolated for it. “I said something wrong,” Farkas said, his eyes flashing towards the still-sweating Breton.

“ _Now_ you notice?” It was a low blow and he hated himself for it as soon as he said it and even worse after the man winced in response. He didn’t like to mock Farkas in earnest. Usually he didn’t care one bit if the man had trouble reading other people, and what was worse was that he’d been trying to be kind and flippant like Kastus always was. Unfortunately, the self-hatred only fuelled the inevitable.

He let his bag hit the ground, his chest starting to heave. Immediately his hands flew to his shirt as he fell to his knees, desperate to tear it off in time because he didn’t have the damned _money_ to replace it right now. Spit dripped from his mouth as if he was going to vomit and his body began rocking uncontrollably. “Kastus,” Farkas kneeled down, indifferent to the beastial convulsions that wracked his body. “You don’t have to do it like this. Just focus.” _Cheap advice,_ he thought bitterly.

“Let me _change,”_ he spat (literally), his hands tightening dangerously on his shirt.

“We’re too close to Morthal now,” Farkas protested, stabilizing Kastus’ shoulders. Emotions whirled through him like they were being flushed out to make way for the beast; he was angry, he wanted to tear into Farkas, he was lonely, he wanted to kiss him, he was too big for his body, he wanted to stretch, he was too heavy, he needed to _run._

“Breathe deep,” Farkas ordered, bringing their foreheads together (not without violence). “Focus on me.” That was evidently the wrong thing to say because Kastus surged forward with unexpected strength, slamming the Nord against the ground. He hovered over top of him, feeling his face and arms _straining_. Everything was on fire and teetering _just_ on the edge of transformation. Colours blurred— Farkas’ face was a mess of dripping lights and indistinct features.

If he’d just _turned_ when he had the chance this wouldn’t be an issue, but now a naggingly _human_ part of him reminded himself that if he did so now then he ran the chance of fighting Farkas; either hurting him, or missing his chance and allowing him to turn as well and kick Kastus’ ass. _This_ was why the noble struggle was fucking pointless and moronic— let Vilkas and Kodlak battle the beast inside. Let Farkas do it if it damn well pleased him but _Kastus wasn’t cursed._ It was vampirism all over again; he’d asked for it, so why should he complain? He didn’t want to be human.

“Are you gunna turn?” It sounded like a challenge, but like it’d been issued in a shout from fifty feet back. He couldn’t hear anything.

“Why not?” It was hard to talk around his mouth, flexing and drooling as it was. He knew why, and Farkas knew what he was facing. He wasn’t afraid; Kastus was, a little. Self control wasn’t his strong suit by any stretch of the imagination, but he was _manageable._ Just… not when people expected some level of shame or decency from him.

“Because you don’t have to. _You_ own your body, not the werewolf.”

The simple profoundness made him uncomfortable. “I _am_ a werewolf.”

“That’s not all you are. If you give in everytime you want to, then what happens to the rest of you?” His eyes— pretty, grey, usually unfocused and distant— never felt so sharp. Kastus breathed. He sat back, still on Farkas but no longer pinning him. He felt like an idiot of the highest class; he’d never thrown a bloody tantrum like that in his whole life, even as a child.

“Look at me, I’m drooling all over you,” he said, his whole arm shaking as he wiped spit and foam from his lips. Calm was reasserting itself and shapes and colours were becoming more distinct. Farkas rose up on his elbows but didn’t insist that Kastus get off of him. _The rest of him,_ he’d said, as if he was the authority on everything that made his friend real and human. Kastus wasn’t a human, plain and simple. He’d never wanted to be one, even when he’d thought that he had no other choice. “Maybe there is no rest of me,” he said, speaking to the question rather than letting it pass quietly. “Maybe this is it.”

“A werewolf didn’t adopt Sissel,” he pointed out, and Kastus choked back the urge to laugh.

“A werewolf? No.” A vampire, however, most certainly had. It’s what started this whole damn mess in the first place, a sad little Nord girl with lank blonde hair and weak eyes who thought he was somebody worthwhile.

“Why do you always talk like that?” Farkas asked, annoyed as suddenly as Kastus had been moments before.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re keeping me out of the joke,” he accused. “I’m missing something but you aren’t telling me what it is like you usually do.” As always, he was a sharper man than he was being given credit for— Kastus was no great liar, which was what always made his forays into civilization so brief. It got tiresome after a while, to keep lying and covering up his lies and trying to keep track of them all. He couldn’t even be clever with white lies because how did one _dance around_ vampirism?

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” he responded with a shrug, making himself comfortable. Straddling metal was hardly romantic, but he’d take it as he was still coming down from the head-spinning loss of control. The cold kept him from embarrassing himself at least, as he was fairly certain that every time he left Jorrvaskr with Farkas, Vilkas shot them both a look that implied a firm order to _not_. He didn’t know what he was trying to prevent, but he knew that his opinion on the matter was _don’t._

“I wanna know,” he said with all the ferocious honesty that made Kastus’ palms sweat. Farkas was so _good_ at that sort of thing, as disarming as Sissel was but in an _entirely_ different way. Their similarities ended at their mortality but gods help him, he was mortal now too (so long as he was willing to live and die in this particular time period). Perhaps he belonged here, for now.

He leaned forward with much less force than Farkas had earlier, settling himself coquettishly on the Nord’s chest near enough to breath the same frosted air that escaped from his parted lips. Sweet, oblivious Farkas let him. “My name was Kastus Maborel, once upon a time,” he offered. It wasn’t quite what he’d asked for, but it was something that he hadn’t shared with a soul since he’d had one of his own.

“Isn’t it still your name?”

“I only go by Kastus, now. Thought it would make me more Nord-ish,” he teased. Farkas didn’t respond, probably trying to piece together the implications of something as foolish as Kastus dropping his last name as soon as he’d crossed into Hammerfell.

“What about your family?”

“I don’t think they’d care much.” Having been dead for hundreds of years _would_ do that. He supposed that maybe the Maborel clan lived on in Wayrest still, or perhaps had been diluted through to other families over such a long period of time. The prospect didn’t fill him with delight, as perhaps a Nord thought it ought to. Ancestry meant so much to mortals; he was his own ancestor a thousand times over.

“It doesn’t count as answering if you avoid the question,” he groused, and Kastus laughed.

“Ask me something then,” he challenged, feeling bold. Gods forbid he actually hit the mark, but it didn’t seem important.

Farkas watched him for a second with a grave face, trying to land on a single question; Kastus was downright pleased that he’d managed to come off as so mysterious. “How did you come to Skyrim?” he asked finally.

“By boat.”

“Kastus.”

He laughed, dipping his hot forehead against the cool metal of Farkas’ cuirass. They’d have to set up camp soon— surely even a Nord must’ve been cold lying on the frozen ground like he was. “I left Wayrest for Hammerfell. After Hammerfell I decided on Cyrodiil, but I was… obligated to leave. A group of people wanted me dead very much, and I disagreed on the matter. They chased me to Morrowind, and then Solstheim, and from there I took a boat to Windhelm.”

“Why did they want you dead?” And here was the difficult part, because there was no polite way to say _vampire hunter._

“Ah… that’s… a different story. I don’t think I’m ready to tell it yet.” Honesty was supposedly best and so he went with it. He didn’t _want_ to lie to Farkas, but the man was definitely going to hack him in half when he found out that a vampire had slipped into his childhood home.

“When you came to Jorrvaskr, you smelled wrong,” he said, sitting up properly. Kastus fell ass-first onto the frosted ground between Farkas’ legs, immediately dropping eye contact guiltily. This was such a big deal to Farkas, but what was he supposed to do? What could he possibly say?

“Wrong?”

“Not human.”

“That’s strange,” he said, not sure if it was a lie or not. Strange in the sense that any newcomer who walks in smelling of blood and death is unusual, but not unexpected information. Kastus had been expecting to be run out of town.

“Is it?” He was relentless tonight, and the moon cycle wasn’t making anything any less tense. Kastus had a better control of himself now, but Farkas stood up abruptly (as abruptly as a large man in heavy armour could). Without waiting for a response, rightly expecting that there was nothing satisfying that his companion was willing to say, he started walking again. Kastus scrambled to his feet inelegantly, grabbing his pack off of the ground and rushing after him.

“Do you trust me, Farkas?” he asked, trying to keep up. “And don’t just say yes. Think about it for a second.” That was a joke that the man clearly didn’t get— or flat-out ignored, at least.

“You’re part of the pack, of course I trust you,” he said, regardless of the thought he was asked to put into it.

“In all the years you’ve been in the Circle you’ve never thought badly of anyone?” It was a moot question, he supposed. Who was he supposed to dislike? His brother? A woman so close she may as well have been his sister? The men who raised him?

He slowed his walk, then shrugged sullenly. “This isn’t like that,” he said.

That smelled like a story. “Oh?”

“You don’t know him. Kodlak made him leave because the beast blood ran too hot in him; he liked the kill too much. He… said we were alike, because I like to fight, but Vilkas said it wasn’t true because Arnbjorn didn’t have any honour.” Kastus frowned.

“And the Companions just… told him to go?” he asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“A member of the Circle turned out to be violent and enjoyed death so much that even a collection of warriors whose job it usually is to kill people said _no, that’s too much,_ and Kodlak just said he had to pack his bags?” He couldn’t even envision the Harbinger being that dense, but then again one day someone might look back on his own presence in the Companions and say _Kodlak just_ let _a vampire join up?_

Farkas, for a man that supposedly so enjoyed the violence and flagrant shows of strength, was being absurdly naive about the whole thing. “Uh… yeah. What was he supposed to do?”

Kastus shook his head, privately a little more than pleased when he heard the telltale signs of Farkas’ lumbering along behind him. The stress melted away as easily as it’d come for both of them, which was one of the unique quirks about lycanthropy that almost made him miss vampirism. The only time he was so overwhelmed as a vampire was after feeding, while the blood reintroduced itself to his starved system. “One day I’ll tell you my big secret, Farkas, and if you get angry I’m going to be very upset. The Companions aren’t _nearly_ righteous enough for me to accept any flak for what I’ve done in the past.”

“Not about being right, it’s about doing what you think is best with honour,” he said, clearly having been coached. He was only here to show off, after all.

“No offence but from the stories you’ve told me? None of you are right often enough for me to really feel shame,” he teased. Farkas snorted— the downside of having to coach him on a lot of catchphrases was that he barely cared what they meant— and took a swipe at him, that stupidly charming grin on his face. It lent itself rather naturally to Kastus ducking out of his reach and getting half-chased down the path with the advantage of never wearing proper armour. He could feel himself grinning like a fool, really smiling in earnest, in a way that took such little energy and thought. Sometimes it felt like just trying to act normal was a spell in and of itself, master class illusion, but with him it was so… easy. Mortality felt like less of a chore, and this whole _pack_ thing more real.

That, and he loved the look Farkas gave him sometimes. Like right then; his face was flushed but not from the cold, and he was grinning and looking half captivated with his arm latched just above Kastus’ hips. “Still there, big guy?” he asked teasingly, his breath coming in white puffs.

“Still here,” he confirmed, not letting go.

**Author's Note:**

> [My writing blog is here](http://nebulaad.tumblr.com) and I just really like Skyrim. Andromeda was kind of a bust for me so I picked it up again and here I am. We all know that Kastus adopted Sissel because her father was a fucking dick, but did you know he also married a big burly werewolf? Because he does. Eventually.
> 
> Also highkey what is up with. Okay you wander into the Dark Brotherhood sanctuary and here's this dude like "I am a werewolf and I used to be a Companion (and therefore part of the Circle) before I was kicked out because I'm bloodthirsty" and that's all well and good but like... @ the Circle _was no one going to mention this?_ Like this feels like a big goddamn deal especially when you consider how close the Companions are. Kodlak raised Farkas and Vilkas with Sjkor and Jergen, Aela was less of a permanent fixture until she was older but also the only other child even partially raised within Jorrvaskr by the Companions. 
> 
> Like all I can picture is yall know "The Quest For Camelot" where you have King Arthur's knights singing about unity and peace and joy and love and suddenly Sir Rupert, twitchy-eyed, lank haired, _wearing red and black and spikes_ Rupert stops them because he wants to hear what land he gets, not about love and peace. Like... was Arnbjorn just this scary ass fucking dude who hung out with the Companions?


End file.
